Sunday, January 15, 2012

El Pueblo Esto Dos Hermanos Construido

Authentic Mexican restaurants can be hard to come by. That’s why I’ve been particularly interested in trying El Pueblo since I worked in Blue Ash last fall. The story goes that two brothers started El Pueblo after training in the kitchen and front of the house of other Mexican restaurants. Then came the personal touch of using family recipes to wow the customers in their family owned and operated establishment.

El Pueblo Interior

I met Karen and Melissa for lunch. I arrived first giving me a chance to try out the chips and salsa and take in the space. The salsa was mild and on the sweet side. Perfect for my taste. The chips were fresh, hot, and light. The place was originally a Pizza Hut, which is hard to disguise unless you do some major renovating inside and out. Despite that, it’s a nice dining space with intense color accents and original artwork displayed. The dining room is open with booths surrounding the perimeter. There’s a rather spacious outdoor patio for warm weather dining.

Lunch Carnitas

I concentrated on the lunch menu. There were three entrées highlighted, but I wanted to peruse them all. There was all of the standard Mexican fare, but I did detect several others that sounded pretty good. I decided on the highlighted Lunch Carnitas. My main objective was that I wanted to choose an entrée that was accompanied with guacamole so I could try it out. The large chunks of pork were definitely slow-cooked, tender to the fork, and flavored just right. The rice had bits of vegetables and the refried beans were creamy. The guacamole wasn’t over the top, but the fresh flavor was there with smooth small chunks of avocado.

Melissa was dieting so she was set on the Taco Salad (sounds like diet food, but not really). The ingredients all

Taco Salad

looked fresh. Sometimes a taco salad can be overwhelming in size but this one looked appropriate for a lunch portion.

Tacos al Chencho

Karen probably made the best choice as she had prior experience. She chose the Tacos al Chencho. It was grilled marinated chicken atop a corn tortilla (Karen went with a flour tortilla), and topped with fresh cilantro and feta cheese. It looked delicious! Rice, black beans, lettuce, and sour cream were the accompaniments.

Service was friendly and prompt. Perfect for lunch dining. The experience the two brothers had coming in to this has definitely paid off for them and their customers. The more adventurous dinner menu is certain to be in my future dining experiences.

About Dexter…

Dexter—professional listener

He ran his consulting business from a home he shared with us from the fall of 2010 to the spring of 2014. We all got along very well and liked to entertain and get together with our friends and families. He was a great listener and enjoyed tuning in to our thoughts on the entertaining things in life. We hope you enjoy the posts Dexter shared with us previous to his death in April of 2014. We promised him he would always be a part of the blog we all started together.